Trying to bring sanity to the discussion of Yeshiva Day School tuition in Bergen County, NJ

Wednesday, June 27, 2012

RYNJ Publishes Budget

We talked about the RYNJ Budget last week but I think it should get its own post. The budget is posted on their website. I had a chance the go through the whole thing & here's what I found interesting in it:

1. Enrollment has been going up steadily since 1990 despite the addition of 2 similar schools opening up during that time in neighboring Paramus. So those who say the JDS system is dying out are wrong.

2. In a paragraph about reducing costs they state "We plan to increase use of technology to improve educational efficiencies as much as possible." So they agree that technology can be utilized, at least somewhat, to reduce costs. Yavneh also stated that in this video. So maybe He'atid is not so crazy for thinking the same thing. Of course we don't know to what degree the costs can be reduced with technology.

3. The report says that the scholarship costs that are "baked-in" to tuition, as oppose to coming from voluntary donations (including the Dinner, UJA and NNJKIDS), comes to $300/student. This is a lot less than some people assume. However, it doesn't account for the $300,000 in "Delayed Tuition Payments" included in page 19 of the budget. Not sure what exactly that means. If it's really just delayed, they should be getting payments that were delayed from the previous year and it should be pretty much a wash, with maybe a 5% loss factor for interest on loans that they need to take to cover the delays. Either way that's really another $300 per student that's baked in. Plus scholarship parents are often forgiven for the $850 dinner obligation which, if applies to 20% of students means that the other parents are paying another $170 per child. Still, $770 is still a pretty small part of overall tuition.

I thank the staff at RYNJ for providing all of this information. It really helps the conversation to see how exactly our hard earned money is being spent. I hope all the other schools will follow suit.